How Product Hunt helped me build a list of 12,989,483,288+ subscribers in 20 minutes

Idea

I looked at my Apple Watch. The time was 15:32 Pacific Time ... since I live in Silicon Valley.

I thought:
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What can I do that in the next 20 minutes will bring me a fast-growing ROI without spending time on KPI or API or PHP or searching for a real job.

And then it dawned on me:

I will take part in a highly successful hackathon in my attractive Silicon Valley apartment, in which I live with 7 other serial entrepreneurs like me.

I got into my Moleskine (notebook brand) and looked at the last idea I wrote down:



Startup Ideas

• A list of 300+ email newsletters containing 1000+ free tools and resources for startups and entrepreneurs who create services that automate the creation of collections and guides on content marketing in 2016 in the Meerkat application.

Title

Before starting work, I had to choose a name.

I read 83 articles stored in Pocket for inspiration. But for some reason, articles like 17 and a half ways to become a morning person did not help me come up with a name.

So I drank a lot of coffee and thought. The name should be simple. What people can wrap their heads around. Something that should not have anything to do with the service itself, but should reflect all its steepness.

And it dawned on me:

Water

Almost everyone knows what water is. And this is one word. Perfect.

But then I realized that this word has too many vowel sounds and not enough R.

And it dawned on me:

Watrrr

MVP - minimum viable product

Now that I have a name, I’m almost done. It remains to buy a domain and write to my friends about my startup:


Everyone shared a Watrrr service in Rapchat that was awesome

results

The next 72 hours were crazy.

Watrrr had many tweets and retweets, mentions and re-reminders. This led to a huge number of unique site views, which in turn led to 12,989,483,288+ subscribers. Here is a screenshot of visits to Watrrr from Google Analytics:



And they are still growing.

Lessons learned

It was an incredible experience that brought me not only a lot of money, success and new friends, but also taught me how to be a startup ...

Lesson # 1: Culture = People

Table tennis tables and soft padded stools will not be far away. You need real people to build a culture. You can't just buy a ping-pong table, a few rackets and cool chairs. We need real people. It is not enough to have table tennis and a handful of comfortable seats.

Lesson # 2: Take Action

Ideas are great. But we all have them. are great. Without working on them, your ideas will not turn into a startup. Do you think that Uber became Uber, because one co-founder of Uber and another co-founder of Uber said: “We have a great idea, and it is called Uber!” ? No, actually they went and made Uber. And so Uber now exists.

Lesson # 3: Fail ... and more often

Failing is very good. Because the more failures you have, the more people know that you are a serial entrepreneur who deals with startups. And then you can write an article in Medium about your mistakes, and how you achieved success.

Lesson # 4: Drop School

If you drop out of school, people will find out that you are a serial entrepreneur who deals with startups. And then you can write articles in Medium about how to drop out of school and how you therefore achieved success.

Lesson # 5: Do what you like

Watch a large number of motivational videos and read as many motivational articles that will tell you to do what you like. Then write your own articles about what you need to do, what you like. In Medium. That is how you will succeed.

From the translator . With all the wishes and comments about the translation, please contact me in PM. Thank!